THE OUTSIDER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11431, 23 July 1900, Page 6

THE OUTSIDER.

[by iiudy.vm) Kirwxo.] :v; V Part I. ,;- ; -'"'■:]: From Sternberg's midnight mountain, Prom Sauna's -captured post, ' Where Afric's Magcrsfontcin >~. *s ,: y Bails down her wounded » . Threo days and nights to suthard, Twixt D'Urban Road and 1 aarlIn dust and horse-dun? smotheredThere lies a Cursed Kraal. About the time that Gentleman Cadet Walter Setton was posted to the 2nd Battalion of Her Majesty's Royal Rutlandshire Regiment, the vicar, his father, read a telegram that the Pretoria Government was searching the mines of the Rand for hidden arms. The vicar and his wife were profoundly unimpressed. They were on their way to the Army and Navy Stores to buy Walter's many uniforms ; and the vicar doubted that lie would escape for less than £200 ' .. mv ■! " Rut we cannot repine, said his wite. "Walter's position demands ," she ceased for a breath. "And as an officer— you see, William ? We have much to be thankful for." The vicar lowered the paper, remembering how an accident of a legacy had saved Walter from horrid fates'. He and his wife had agreed to forget a certain terrible afternoon, when Walter, aged 16, had been examined viva voce by an unsympathetic person, sent down by a friend, with a view to getting him a "position in the city at something under 18s a week. He had forgotten, too, how he and his wife were grateful for this chance. A week later, when the vicar's aunt was gathered to her sisters, and the money was sure, they wrote a letter declining that post, for Walter, which letter remains as a curiosity in a business man's desk to this day. " Yes," said the vicar, " as you say, my dear, we have much to be thankful for. As an o jfi cer ," He turned down the paper. Had he read 10 lines further he would have learned that much amusement lias been caused in mining circles owing to the activity of the police, who are searching Thumper's Deep, on information supplied by Mr. J. Trupp, who asserted that 2000 stand of arms had been buried at the bottom of the shaft. At the hour the vicar was speculating in " tunics, richly laced, lined silk, £6 Ms 6d;" "undress trousers, bine doc or twill, £1 16s; " "forage caps (badge extra), £1 Os 6d;" and all the other grim realities of war, Jerry Thrupp, in charge of the 30 odd thousand pounds of modern machinery on Thumper's Deep, was cheering a batch of perspiring Johannesburg police to break out the bottom of South Africa. Business was slack in Johannesburg by reason of a raid, and Jerry's 10 years on the Rand had taught him that the'police were least dangerous when most bns-v. Two thousand rifles in a concrete vault. 10ft below the solid foot of the shaft, would be a great haul for the Boers. That they were working in the living rock was to them a detail. The devil had given these Uitlanders powers denied to sons of the soil: and no community in their senses would start a revolution on less than 20.000 rifles. A scant 1500 only bad. so far, come to light. " Where do voii think we shall find them?" a panting Hollander asked. " About the Marquesas Islands, if you hold your line straight," said Jerry, and shot up in the cage. Three minutes later he telephoned that the winding-gear was out of order, and would hike half a day to repair. " They had a very nice time," he explained to his professional friends, "They dug nearly 4ft into the bottom of the shaft before they sickened, and Patsy Gee burned about a' hundredweight of his precious Revolutionary Committee's papers in mv boiler fires while they were down below. But as a revolution, if you ask me, it's tumblepuppy. Alter this, we're goin' to have war." " Not a bit. of it," said Hagan, of the Consolidated Ophir and Bonanza. "We shall be passed over to Oom Paul to play with. Robinson hasn't been to see the prisoners yet— and if I know him he won't go." "Never mind." said Jerry. "It's war. Soon or late, it's war."

Time, Circumstance, and Necessity continued in charge of this world, of Jerry Thnipp, and Second-Lieutenant Walter Setton. To the former they brought from eight to 12 hours' work a day—shifting, varying, but insistent. Sometimes a batch of $' stamps in the Thumper's Deep Crushing Mills would go wrong, and Jerry must doctor them ere the output suffered. Sometimes a sick friend in charge of the cyanide process would call Jerry in to watch the health of the big vats that win the last of the gold ; or a furlone or two of tramline would need relaying. His winding-engines, his boilers, his crushing tables, his dynamos, and the hundred things that men needed below the surface were always with. him. For recreation Jerry consorted with fellow-engineers of the Rand, theicwives, and their children; and, being energetic, found opportunities for what he called " overtime." When Hagan's ankle was crushed, thanks to a Kaffir's carelessness. Jerry carried him home, and, because Hagan's 10-year-old son was in the hospital with typhoid, Jerry, as a matter of course, visited and reported on the boy daily. He lent the Vincents the money that took them home in the terrible year 1898, when Johannesburg lost heart and business shot down, and Vincent was turned nut into Commissioner-street with Mrs. Vincent. It is even said that by bnb°s and threats he kept the conservancy people up to their work in his street when the typhoid, that comes from neg.ected filth, struck down three heads of families hi 200vds.

" After the war," Jerry would say, as excusing himself, " it will be all right. We've got to do what we can till after the war." The life of Second-Lieutenant Walter Setton followed its appointed channel. His battalion, nominally efficient, was actually a training-school for recruits, and to this lie, written, acted, and spoken many times a day, he adjusted himself. When he could by anv moans escape from the limited amount of toil expected by the Government he did so, employing the same shameless excuses that he had used "it school or Sandhurst, He knew bin drills; he honestly believed that they covered the whole art of war. He knew the " internal economy of his regiment.'' That is to say, he could answer leading questions about wood and coal allowances, cubic footage of barrack accommodation, canteen routine, and the men's messing arrangements. For the rest, he devoted himself, with no thought of wrong, to getting as much as possible out of the richest and easiest life the world has yet made ; and to despising the " outsider"the man beyond his circle. His training to this end was as complete as that of his brethren. He did it blandly, politely, unconsciously, with perfect sincerity. As a child he had learned early to despise his nurse, for she was a servant and a woman ; his sisters he had looked down upon, and his governess, for much the same reasons. His home atmosphere had taught him to despise the terrible thing called "dissent." At his private school Ills seniors showed him how to despise the junior master, who was poor, and here his home training served again. At his public school he despised the new boy— boy who boated when Sctton played cricket, or who wore a coloured lie when the order of the day was for black. They were all avatars of the " outsider." If you " got mixed up with an outsider," you ended by being "compromised." He had no clear idea of what that meant, but suspected the worst. His religion he took from his parents, and it had some very sound dogmas about outsiders behaving decently. Science was to him a name connected with examination papers. He could not work up any interest in foreign armies, because, after all, a foreigner was a foreigner, and the rankest form of "outsider." Meals came when you rang for them; you were carried about the world, which is the home counties, in vehicles for which you paid. You were moved about London by the same means; and if you crossed the Channel you took a steamer. But how, or when, or why these things were made, or worked, or begotten, or what they felt, or thought, or said, who belonged to them, he had not, nor ever wished to have, the shadow of an idea, His lack of imagination was equalled only by his stupendous lack of curiosity. It was sufficient for him, and for high Heaven (this, in his heart of hearts, well learned at his mother's knee), that lie was an officer and a gentleman, incapable of a lie or a mean action. For the rest, his code was simple. Money, bought you half the things in this world, and your position secured you the others.

If you bad money, you took care to get y OUr ' \i money's worth: .If you had a position, y'bnfl did not compromise yourself by miringSritf&l outsiders. , -'l^^ And,* in the fulness of time, one old I gentleman who knew his own mind, knocked m the bottom out of Lieutenant Setton's and | Jerry ' Thrupp's. • world. , Jerry came first m unwillingly, with a ; few. thousand others! '. by way of Koomatipoort. ;' He helped tttm women * and children out of ■ Johannesburgthe few that remained; and left his'h'busJH barricaded in charge of a Hollander o iliciaU?# "Remember," said Jerry, "I advise you 1 to f look after this house. If anything happem to it you won't be happy when I corn , . back." . . '"',-:: "We shall chase yon into the sea at ■ D'Urban," said the Hollander. " Shouldn't wonder-seeing how behind.,' hand wc are. But then we'll chasi OD .-- back again. S'long, you four-coloured inji poster. I hope you won't blow yourselves '* up before you're shot." ; .,..; ;■ -£' He climbed into a cattle truck, where'hijg valise was stolen, and arrived at Dehvgoa bay, his shirt torn to the waist in a scuffle to get p water for a sick man. His home, his business, and all his belongings wore gone, ! but the war that men had doubted was upon them at last, and Jerry was happy. %H e ig went round to Capetown on the deck of &§C crowded steamer, and disappeared into§ thronged and panic-stricken Adderley-street. Here he met i'hil. Tenbroek, ex-mine manager, also ruined for the time being, and con. ferred with him about raising a (corps of Railway Volunteers in event of future trouble. S|f|| Lieutenant Set ton, 7000 miles away, was scornful when he heard that Bullcr'would not undertake the war with less than 70,0001 troops. Thirty thousand, he held, was more than enough. ' For the Rutlandshire's mess would remember that the army was not what it had been in 1881. It had now learned tog shoot. Set-ton did not say where or how.'* He wished very much to sec how the Boers 1 would look after a cavalry brigade had boxed their ears across 10 miles of open country. Except twice, near Salisbury, heX had never seen anything that remotely re- \"~ sembled 10 miles of open country in all his life. He had never seen a cavalry brigade. A or, indeed, a target at a greater distance than 900 yds. Having spoken, he went up l to town to see a play, pending the absoiption of the Transvaal. . The Rutlandshire, landed at Capetown fairly late in the war, and. serene as huh-.:/ dreds who had gone before him, Lieutenant Setton. dining at the Mount Nelson, gave, in the fine clear voice he had inherited from his mother, his opinion that " those colonials,--looked a most awful set of outsiders." He.'; : hoped, aloud, that it would not be his (ate v; "to have to work with those bounders." < ps In another place, at another lime, an in-'/: formal after-dinner court of inquiry with unlimited powers, sat on Jiis irreproachable regiment after this fashion : ~-.:;■; " Arc those Rutlandshires any use '!" The 1 / questioner had good right to ask. ' ; y!? "Mark Two, I think. It's the same old:-

Badajos, Talavera, lukerman, Toulouse, Tel-el-Kebir " •;.; ||| " Same tactics as those which were so bril- m liantly successful at TeJ-el-Kebir," a spade--rt: bearded officer whispered as though he were II quoting Scripture. . ]±i% "Yees. Same oki catch-words—lf old training. 'Shoulder to shoulder—uj. boys, and at 'em.' Southsea, Chichester, . Canterbury ; with the Long Valley for a" ■): campaign. Colonel past his work ; second S in command devoutly hoping never to sec a |j| soldier again when he's got his pension ;a't jewel of an adjutant, who's mothered h1(l| men till they can't button their own breeches ; sergeant-major great on eye-wash, V"- : and a bit of a lawyer. The reft, the re- pj gular idiots— in a blue funk of funking.-.'-; They want a chance to ' get in with thel§| bayonet' of course." ;«|l "That's the last refuge of the lazy man," : : (.' said a quiet-faced civilian, who liad not yetlp spoken. - |||| "Oh, they'll learn in time," the spade-||| bearded officer grunted. "When half the men are in Pretoria Rn|]|| half the rest are wounded—if that's what||| you man. I'm so sick of that 'in time.' The colonel will die—l wish ho was dead now—> " fighting hevoicaliv' in Mine damn-fool trap S; he's walked into with his eves open." ~j&m

Well, I'm going to split 'em up. They were promised they should go in—ah— ;> shoulder to shoulder, but the hospitals are m quite full enough." ' ■•-'-. m To their immense rage the Rutlandshire?3j| were rent into four or five pieces, and distri- ,> buted where they could not do much harm. ;,-'■ The colonel, exactly as was prophesied, drains heroically, shot through the stomach at the §| head of four companions, to whom he was explaining tne cowardice of advancing in open order when the enemy were yet a mile dis-;A tant. This fixed in the second's mind '.lie fact that a Mauser/can carry 2000ydwis- ■- dom which he did not live Ion? to profit by. : He went down at eleven hundred before an ,1 insignificant crack in the veldt, which hap- :.y pened to be lined with Boers. Thus his sue-,;"', cessor discovered that a donga is bctte 1 flanked than fronted. Truly they learned.:'..".